Resume The Resume

The Ides of March are fast approaching, as are the registered letters that so many of us teachers will be receiving. It is a nervous time, and so I have spent some of my excess energy updating my resume. It's an interesting exercise that I tend to avoid, since it generally means that I am about to embark on that least pleasant of avocations: searching for a vocation. But what I discovered on this last pass gave me pause.
I was filling in the section called "work history," and it became apparent that mine was more of a post-mortem. My last three employers no longer exist. The video store I worked at during college was boxed up and closed down back when there was still such a thing. Last I checked, the Italian restaurant next door had blown through a wall and set up tables where our "new releases" section used to be.
I left that corpse to go and work installing modular office furniture. What was going to be a few months' gig turned out to be a few years, and I ended up leaving when I fell in love and moved to California. A few years later the office furniture disappeared and the motorcycle escort business that had been my boss's hobby filled the warehouse.
When I arrived in California, my first impulse was to work in a video store. When that application got no response, I followed my girlfriend's advice and applied at the book warehouse where her mother's book was being distributed. I took that job with the idea that I would be there until something better came along. That lasted five years, and I moved up the ladder quickly enough to management and even the Board of Directors that my father said this: "It either says a lot about you, or a lot about them." He turned out to be right. That employee owned Berkeley experiment is now defunct. I suspect the warehouse space may be used for a motorcycle escort business, or maybe it houses the leftover tapes of a now shuttered video store.
It was my girlfriend, now my wife, who suggested that I might try out this intern-teaching program. I could get my credential while I got paid to be a teacher, eliminating my biggest excuse about having to go back to school and stop working. Work and go to school while you're teaching school. That was fourteen years ago. I have now been a teacher longer than I worked at a video store, installed office furniture, and managed a book warehouse combined. Have I at last arrived at my career?
Be careful what you wish for, since that sucking sound you hear is the education budget, and the swirling vortex of layoffs is coming for those of us who might be shaken loose. The young ones. The old ones. The ones who were on their way out anyway. The ones who are now considered superfluous. So I'm working on my resume, in case I fall into any of those categories.
And my mind goes back to four jobs ago, when I worked for Target. I unloaded trucks. It was a very zen experience. We sorted items by department and put them on pallets until we reached the back of the trailer. Then we were done. Target just opened a store in Oakland. Maybe I'll drop by and put in an application. But I don't want to be the reason they go out of business.

Bang!

A California school teacher was placed on paid administrative leave after he rattled a table to get the attention of his math students, startling an eighth grade girl who used her cell phone to call police. Happily, no children or furniture were hurt in this incident, but it does point out once again the awesome power wielded by our nation's educators. These youngsters were placed in the care of a serial fixture abuser, one who seems to think that paying attention to the teacher was the most important thing in the world. Or at least in the classroom. Those poor, tormented middle schoolers. There will, no doubt be countless trips to therapy as the post-traumatic stress begins to sink in, and you can almost hear the lawsuits for pain and suffering being filed as we contemplate how things could have gone so wrong. And to top it all off, why is this person on paid administrative leave? With all that cash, a teacher might just skip town and go settle down in a town where there are more children to intimidate and furniture to shake.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, I remember Mister Gauthier, God rest his soul. He was my ninth grade math teacher. He had a habit, not just once, but several times throughout the year, of waiting until we were all heads down engrossed in our weekly quiz, and he would stand up on a chair with an empty trash can. When all was silent and focus was extreme, he would let the can drop to the floor, shattering the silence and our nerves. I'm sure that he received a number of test papers each week with a large pencil mark streaking up the page in response to the clatter he had engineered. It was always a good laugh. For him. We didn't have cell phones. Nobody complained to the principal. Everyone chuckled nervously, and went back to work. It was just Mister Gauthier being Mister Gauthier.
In the future, we can expect that moving furniture will be forbidden in California classrooms and training will be required over the summer for teachers to be more sensitive to the needs of their students and their tables. Or suffer the consequences.

Still Life

The coarse laughter of the seagull reminded me that I had bee staring for some time. Staring into the middle distance without doing anything else. It was a welcome relief from the act of doing nothing, something that I had sat myself down on a bench with a purpose to do. It was in striking contrast to the way I had set up my day, filling my backpack full of items that would sustain me through the potentially arduous vacuum of the jury room: iPod, laptop, book, notebook, pen, cell phone. As it happened, I used most of these before lunch, and was grateful to have them all.
Then, after lunch, I was set adrift. Once more my experience with the justice system was profound and brief, the judge decided that I wasn't ready to decide for him. I wandered out into the midday hustle and bustle of downtown Oakland. I walked a few blocks to the spot where my wife had agreed to pick me up and found a spot to sit down and wait. I sat down and did nothing. Nothing. Just sat and stared. At one thirty in the afternoon. No none around to distract me beyond the random strangers passing by. No Internet connection. I watched the birds. I watched them fly. I watched them swim. I looked out on Lake Merritt and tracked the ripples as they moved to the shore in front of me. The breeze shifted and stalled, then picked up again.
It's so hard to sit still. The runners going by remind me of the movement to which I am accustomed. How many laps have I made around this lake? Now I'm that guy, sitting on a bench. What am I learning? What am I accomplishing? What am I achieving?
Stillness. Allowing the world to pass me by for a change. I'll be back up and moving soon enough, straight through until dinner time, then off to bed where I will toss and turn in anticipation of another day's restless energy.

Zombieland

I'm a victim of the culture wars. Not the one that keeps us from saying "Merry Christmas" or other such politically correct nit-picking. I'm talking about the assault I have endured over the years from television, film, pop music and all the other media outlets that have found their way into my addled brain over the years. I have surrendered vast portions of my cerebellum to the prickly points and surges that I have endured over the course of my life. I would love to say that all of this abuse has somehow made me stronger, but knowing Clara Peller's name doesn't necessarily equate with strength to me.
The fact that the "Where's The Beef" lady resides in my memories while other people who have given me more than a catch phrase have faded troubles me. The fact that I can't hear the song "Big Country " without saying, at least under my breath, "it builds" is a sad commentary on my misspent youth. All it took was Tim Lester, whose name has survived the tides of age, making that observation to me once as we were listening to the Scottish group pound out their one eponymous hit. And so there it sits. Locked into my nervous system like any other automatic reaction.
There are hundreds of other such examples. There are so many that my wife regularly asks if what I have just said to her is a line from a movie or if it was an original thought. "Caddyshack," "Animal House," and "Stripes" live on in the minds of millions of other men my age. But the fact that "Making The Grade," starring Judd Nelson and featuring the film debut of Andrew "Dice" Clay is stuck in my head along with the rest of that mess borders on the ridiculous. And sad. If only I could have harnessed some of those synapses for good, instead of mindless repetition.
Perhaps some good can come from this still, when I have finally lapsed into syndication in that big network in the sky. Scientists can probe my brain, looking for clues to the riddle of pop culture supersaturation. Or maybe they could plug some electrodes into the thing and watch reruns of "WKRP in Cincinnati."

Relic

January 1990, my father had the semi-inspired notion of taking me to the Orange Bowl. We would see the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame try and derail the freight train that was the number one ranked University of Colorado Buffaloes. There was a matter of getting tickets and transportation, but that seemed a small matter, remedied rather quickly with his connections to the athletic department at CU and his buddy with a plane. Tickets and transport secured, we flew out of the snow and into the sunny skies of Miami. Eventually.
First, we had to navigate a full day's worth of winter weather between Colorado and Florida. At one point, we came down through clouds for what seemed like hours until we dropped abruptly onto the runway at Little Rock, Arkansas for fuel and a little warmth. Riding in what was essentially the luggage compartment of a single engine Beechcraft was like taking a trip in a meat locker. A meat locker attached to an dozen lawnmowers that made conversation impossible. We made a quick stop at Orlando to see the World of Disney, primarily because it seemed like a bonus to tack on to the voyage. Then we shoved off for one last hop to the bottom of Florida which was suffering through a cold snap itself, with temperatures in the sixties.
I was up early the morning of the game. I went for a run and returned to the house where we were staying, thanks to another clever coincidence that my father had arranged, that had a pool. I dove in and swam a couple laps before toweling off and meeting my father and his pal to prepare for the big night.
The bus ride to the stadium was quiet, but filled with anticipation: Big Time College Football. We found our seats in the throng of humanity, looking out from beneath the overhang of the upper deck. Not the greatest seats, but we were in the stadium. The first half was a flurry of missed opportunities, as neither team managed to score a point, even though the Buffaloes had their chances. Then came the spectacle that is the Orange Bowl halftime show. I don't know what was going on, since the show isn't geared to the people in the stands, I just remember seeing an elephant relieve itself with great gusto on Notre Dame's sideline. I felt this was a sign of things to come.
Apparently it was, since Notre Dame went on to score three touchdowns to the Buffaloes' one in the second half. Final score: Twenty-one to six. The bus ride back was quieter than the one there, and my father and I shared some wild talk about what might have been and what could be the next year. Through the crowds, I held on to my souvenir program and Fed Ex plastic tumbler. These were stowed away along with me in the back of the Beechcraft as we were up at first light for our flight back to the land of the once and future number one ranked college football team.
A few years later I moved to California. Somewhere in there CU did manage to win a national championship, but my father and I watched on TV that time. I kept the plastic tumbler and dealt with the grumblings of my future wife as I brought it into her cabinets of more mature glassware. As time went by, more plastic tumblers came to keep it company. Souvenirs from other sporting events and concerts, but as the years wore on the paint faded and I was left with a dim reminder of that trip down south.
When that single engine Beechcraft crashed with my father inside, that cup came back into heavy rotation for my morning orange juice. It was a link to our past. It has grown brittle with regular washings. I started giving it a rest, using it only on special occasions, but this Saturday morning, it gave up the ghost. It is no longer a serviceable drinking vessel. It is now more of an artifact in that shards-of-pottery kind of way. I will hold onto the pieces in the same way a museum would hold on to Anasazi crockery. Bits of a bygone era. The past.

Question Time?

I know, I know. If we start asking questions, we won't get anywhere. There is far too much second-guessing going on around here. But while we're waiting for our next directive, let's have a little fun with numbers: Roughly fifty percent of the registered voters in Wisconsin voted in last November's election. That was the one that put Scott Walker into office. Fifty-six percent of those people who dragged themselves out to the polls that day were responsible for that. Or, to be slightly imprecise, one quarter of the eligible voters put Scott Walker in the Governor's Mansion. That's how numbers work. That's how elections work. We get the government we deserve.
But let's go back to that mansion thing. This is a state, like so many others in our great union these days, in financial chaos. What can one man do to keep the wheels on the bus from falling off and leaving one hundred percent of the registered voters without a pot in which to put their collective chickens? Sorry, for the question there, but it was rhetorical, since you could do what California's Jerry Brown is doing by living in a loft in downtown Sacramento, avoiding the need for massive renovations and upkeep required to make the Governor's Mansion livable. Even our previous Governator did his part. Arnold Scharzenegger chose not to take the one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollar a year salary for doing the job. I call that fiscally responsible. Which brings us back to Mister Walker. The one hundred and thirty-thousand dollar a year salary for being governor of Wisconsin ranks nineteenth out of fifty states. While he's proposing budget cuts of all sorts, and an end to collective bargaining by government workers' unions, he's still cashing his checks and living in a mansion. It is from there that he gives his fireside chat updates beneath a portrait of another California governor, Ronald Reagan. It is also the place he took a call from a prankster who called posing as gazillionaire David Koch. And for the record, that call lasted just under ten minutes without Governor Walker figuring out that he had been duped. Just another number. Questions. I've got a lot of them, but they can wait for another time.

We Could Be Heroes

Where do we find heroes? On the football field and basketball courts. In comic books and movies. And on television. Now the cathode ray tube delivers once again: Charlie Sheen. At last the working men and women of our country have someone they can hold up as a standard for their future endeavors. You say your boss is treating you poorly? Hop on your yacht and head down to Barbados to watch "Jaws." When the man comes knocking on your door, you don't have to be home, and if you are, you should be so far in the bag that you need emergency hospitalization to bring yourself back.
And who needs doctors, anyway? If you have some sort of "illness," as those uptight pinheads like to call it, heal yourself in the most time-honored "rock star from Mars" tradition. Mind over matter, even if that mind is riddled by years of drug use and living in an over-protected and privileged universe of Hollywoodland. Then ask for a raise. Charlie figures all of this duress, which is in no way his fault or responsibility, is worth about another one million dollars a year. I am sure that there are teachers and firefighters waking up on the floor of Wisconsin's capitol who are ready to take their fight west. Forget about our collective bargaining agreements, let's go camp out in the front office Columbia Broadcasting System until Charlie gets his three million dollars a year.
For the rest of us, why not get on board with this new breed? "What's not to love?" asks the enlightened one. "Especially when you see how I party. It was epic. The run I was on made Sinatra, Flynn, Jagger, Richards just look like droopy-eyed armless children." And Belushi. And Joplin. And Cobain. And all those other rock stars from Mars. Godspeed, Mister Sheen.